This is real-life (part 2)

Nathan Asher and The Infantry

Turn Up The Faders

It's the summer, you're ten, the sun is out; lights breaks all around; blue skies filled with floating white clouds. It's a beautiful day for playing football; running around on the grass, your mother warns you not to hit any windows, you laugh, and when you do hit one it's a joke, it's funny, it's shared with friends and you're all laughing. You're not a vandal, you're just a kid; this life is brilliant.

Tired from all the running about you head over to the ice-cream van, get a 99 with that Flake that you like so much. Eat it up, spill some on your shirt - it was a mess anyway from the grass-stains. Time to lie down, you lie next to the grass of your neighbours caravan - you don't live here, but it's your holiday home, it's a good place to escape.

Take the ball down to the beach and the wind blows it away so you're down in the sand and you're running out into the sea, and you're sweating, can't wait to dive in - hang on a second - this... this water's freezing. It's all in good fun something about the sunlight has made this day your own, it's there to be seized and you grab it pull it down - like in Bruce Almighty where he ties a string around the moon and pulls it closer - and you hold it in your arms. Your friends are your friends, and this summer has been brilliant.

---

It's only eight years later but suddenly things make less sense, you're still a kid but the world has changed it's not so receptive of you; when you do things you do them on your own - your friends help out sometimes, but rarely, only when you really need it. And you really need help most of the time; it burns you out the stress from your job, your education, you're tired, so tired, you did an eleven hour shift after getting two hours sleep, where was the sense in that, why do you do it why are these sentences falling from your mind and onto your fingertips where did the punctuation go why is everything so damn hard and everything it just

STOPS.

---

This song to me is the transition from those silly summers to the reality of real-life. No wonder it won the John Lennon songwriting competition. It aptly describes the way things were when we were younger and then progresses to flit around lust, alcohol... everything. Listen to the lyrics and you will understand; "encouraged to dance emphatically, manicly, even desperately"; "using liquor as a tourniquet"; "let's succumb to our desires / before we become just like our fathers". We are a desperate generation; endlessly discontent: "this used to be enough for me, now it isn't". Musically, it's that scene in Good Will Hunting when the eponymous protagonist is describing his social-life.

---

WILL
No, but, I mean you know...I do other
things. That no one knows about.

PSYCHOLOGIST
Like what, Will?

WILL
I go places, I interact.

PSYCHOLOGIST
What places?

WILL
Certain, clubs.
(beat)
Like, Fantasy. It's not bad.

Will gives the Psychologist a furtive look.

WILL (cont'd)
It's just that feeling when you can
take your shirt off and really dance.
(beat)
When the music owns you. Do you
understand?

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I think I can understand that. It's the loss of innocence, and it's right there in the ending: Here's to all the new beginnings / We never got back from. [Find out more...]